Showing posts with label Polaroid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Polaroid. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

The best thing about outmoded technology


Fifty years ago, in February 1970, Polaroid Land Cameras were a big thing.

In fact, Polaroid represented instant photography -- pull the undeveloped film out of the camera (and the film was the picture) -- wait a minute (or 2 minutes for color), and you could see what you just took. Will miracles never cease.

Oh, don't forget the flashcubes or flashbulbs if you're going to be taking pictures indoors.
 
Omaha World-Herald -- Feb. 12, 1970
THE TECHNOLOGY of my youth was much more advanced than what we have today, what with taking film-free, electronical "pictures" on one's telephone, which hasn't even the decency to be attached to a phone outlet by a long cord.

With the Polaroid and its Colorpack film, by God, you got 10 exposures, and that film wasn't cheap -- because People Smarter Than Yourself didn't want you wasting time and resources taking pictures of stupid things.

Like yourself.

In 1970, if you tried to take a selfie with a Polaroid camera, it would not go well for you. For one, you would be seeing spots -- still -- in 2020. And that's
assuming you didn't have a bad flashbulb that . . . how shall we put it . . . blew up.

Now, it wouldn't matter at all that the selfie would be completely out of focus. That's because all you would see would be the bright white of the flash bathing your now blind-ass self.

Of course, you could try taking a selfie as people did back then -- in a mirror. In a very well-lit room so you could avoid shooting a flash into a mirror . . . which, again, probably would not go well.  

FUN FACT: Did you know that until, in historical terms . . . yesterday, all selfies showed backward people pointing backward cameras much like the one in our Calandra Camera ad, a


I had a Polaroid camera in 1970, and I am happy to report there are no blurry, washed-out selfies of my Ernie Douglas-looking self. If you know who Ernie Douglas was, you remember the blessed days when taking a selfie was a process involved enough to deter people vain and unserious enough to want to take one.

History giveth, the present taketh away.

Friday, January 04, 2019

Christmas ain't over till the wise men proclaim

If you can't use the classic peel-off Polaroid film and classic Polaroid cameras anymore, you can use my new favorite iPhone app in the world -- the Polaroid Fx app, which makes smartphone pictures look like whatever kind of Polaroid snapshot you'd like.

Here, I have a Polaroid 107 black-and-white film thing going. Now, if the app could just let you pull the actual print out of your phone and peel the negative off, that would be great.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

My day in almost-dead formats


It's been this kind of day at the studio here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska.
The anachronism is great in this one. May the anachronism be with you.
While I'm eyeball deep in this kind of thing, maybe you can be listening to the
3 Chords & the Truth sort of thing. Just a suggestion.





















Thursday, November 29, 2018

Radio Anachronism is on the air. Until it isn't.


Let's make Polaroid art while we can, being that the last of the peel-off film left the factory -- any factory -- more than a year ago. There ain't gonna be any more for the foreseeable future.

And if there ain't gonna be any more for the foreseeable future, there won't be any wet emulsions on the peeled-off part of the film to plaster onto copy paper to make a second, much funkier print. And if you can't make any second, much funkier prints. . . .

I get that time marches on. I get that progress must progress. But I don't like it.


I DON'T LIKE losing more and more of the tactile in technology and in life. I don't like that there won't be that feel -- and that satisfaction -- of pulling film out of an old Polaroid camera . . . and waiting.

I don't like having one less way to be creative that doesn't involve a computer -- not unless you want it to. I don't like having one less opportunity to figure something out myself in a very analog fashion.


I don't like a world where creativity is becoming, where everything is becoming, a Walter Mitty exercise -- the technological version of living in your head instead of in the world.

And I want people to still make effing Polaroid pack film (the peel-off kind) and reel-to-reel audio tape and flash bulbs that scare the s*** out of people when they go off and drip coffee pots . . . and typewriters.

Fat chance, that. This is a world where the under-30 set no longer knows how to write in (or read) cursive, and most of the world's typing gets done with one's thumbs.

WHAT IS IT with that?

Let me ask my friend Harvey.

You have your fake social circle on your smartphone. You have your fake news. I get to have a fake 6-foot bunny rabbit.


And the last of the peel-off instant film.

Yeah, I know. Mighty big talk for someone who's ranting about all this stuff on his blog.

Fortunately, hypocrisy never goes out of style.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Fun with Polaroids


Remember when "instant" photography meant pulling the picture out of the camera, waiting a minute or two, peeling off the print, then trying to find a garbage can for the gooey negative?

Polaroids. Your Polaroid camera produced what we simply called "Polaroids."


We went to a lot of trouble to produce what, truth be told, were really crappy pictures. Exposure was a crapshoot, and even the most exactingly focused shots came out fuzzy.

Young folks with no memory of Polaroids and Instamatics (the take-the film-to-the-drug-store version of fuzzy photography) have no idea how spoiled they have been by their smartphone cameras.

The Polaroid Colorpack II of my childhood is long lost. But the Colorpack II and the fancy-schmancy Polaroid 320 Land camera of someone else's long-ago now are part of my present, thanks to estate sales.

And the pictures still are "Meh." Fun as hell, but decidedly "Meh."

THERE'S JUST something satisfying about snapping a picture, then physically pulling the undeveloped picture out of the camera. The photos on your phone can seem like an abstraction. Your Polaroid shots are anything but.

They're real. They're physical. The experience is tactile. And what you're gonna come out with is a mystery -- at least for 90 seconds or a couple minutes, depending on the temperature.

What I came out with is a little dark. That's what happens when the bloody flash doesn't work. And by "flash," I mean a flash attachment that takes a flash bulb, which you must replace after every flash picture.

Kids cannot fathom this. But I am here to tell them this, to us old people, was the stuff of science fiction at the time. Before Polaroid and flash bulbs, we had to illuminate our subject with a torch to do our cave paintings.

You try it sometime.


But one fun, artsy thing you can do with your wet, gooey Polaroid negative after you've pulled off the print is to carefully place it on a sheet of copy paper -- wet side down -- and roll the hell out of it with a hard rubber roller. What you get is an instant print -- a funky bonus artwork from the throwaway part of your Polaroid snapshot.

Scan it, then enlarge and enhance it on your computer, and you just might have created something artistic. Like this.

It's digital magic. But first, you have to go old school.


Is what grandpa is sayin'.